Editorial: Candid cameras reveal a lot

It's time for a comprehensive review of police tactics and attitudes at all levels.

Copyright 2015: Houston Chronicle

Updated 10:18 am, Monday, August 3, 2015

Photo: James Nielsen, Staff

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A Harris County Sheriff Deputy wears a camera during a press conference announcing Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson's plan to purchase body cameras for the Harris County Sheriff Department and the Houston Police Department Friday, Dec. 12, 2014, in Houston.
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A Harris County Sheriff Deputy wears a camera during a press conference announcing Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson's plan to purchase body cameras for the Harris County Sheriff Department and the ... more

Photo: James Nielsen, Staff

Editorial: Candid cameras reveal a lot

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"Hill Street Blues," the popular NBC police drama from the 1980s, opened each week with a roll call by Sgt. Phil Esterhaus, played by the late Michael Conrad. The crusty sergeant ended his remarks to his cops on the street with a trademark admonition: "Let's be careful out there."

These days, the sergeant would need an addendum: "Let's be smart out there."

Three decades ago, Hill Street's "blues" and their real-life counterparts weren't the focus of ubiquitous phone cameras or dashboard cameras capturing their interactions with the public. Who knows what we would have witnessed if they had been, but what we're seeing these days are cops apparently not smart enough or disciplined enough to keep their emotions under control. They seem to be the ones who are armed and dangerous, particularly if you're a person of color. They're not being careful out there.

Yes, we're aware that enforcing the law is a difficult and often thankless job, and we appreciate that most police officers go about their work admirably. But the unblinking eye of the camera doesn't lie. It continues to reveal with depressing regularity cops who seem to have forgotten their most basic charge - to protect and serve. It shows us what minority Americans have been saying all along about "driving while black" and other infuriating - and dangerous - inequities they have experienced for years.

Maybe, just maybe, the tragic incidents we've witnessed of late will spark a comprehensive review of policing tactics, attitudes and techniques at all levels, even as the use of body and dashboard cameras becomes more widespread. It's an appropriate topic for presidential candidates, for local elected officials and for the general public in a variety of forums. Fortunately, we're seeing signs of that attention already. The need couldn't be more urgent.

On the national level the Justice Department launched a pilot program earlier this year that provides training for local police forces to build better relationships with the communities they serve. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has said she hopes these strategies will help minority communities feel more secure when dealing with police.

Presumably, the strategies Lynch has in mind are part of an effort to scale back what the nation first noticed in Ferguson, Mo., last year: the full-scale militarization of the police. Here were police in body armor wielding high-powered military weapons and riding along streets in armored personnel carriers. The cops looked like they were taking control of war-torn Baghdad, not trying to calm a small St. Louis suburb. They had become "warriors" not "guardians," to use terms popularized by Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor and former police officer.

Stoughton decries what he sees as the long-standing divide between law-enforcement agencies and the communities they serve, particularly communities of color. "Earning public trust will take years, if not decades, and it will require deep changes to police training, culture and accountability mechanisms," he wrote in Washington Monthly not long ago.

Perhaps 9/11 and the so-called war on terror sparked the shift away from the proven effectiveness of community policing, but it's time to re-calibrate. Former Houston police chief and current Houston City Council member C.O. Bradford suggests one way to do that would be to encourage Houston police officers who patrol the inner city to live in the inner city. He's proposing that the city pay officers an additional $10,000 per year if they choose to move. Being part of the community they police could forge valuable bonds, he suggests.

The council member's idea is worth considering. So are ideas coming out of a hearing last week by the House County Affairs Committee, the start of a legislative inquiry into Sandra Bland's arrest and subsequent death in the Waller County Jail.

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, a Houston Democrat who chairs the committee, described the behavior of the officer who arrested Bland as a "catalyst" for her death. "What he did triggered the whole thing," the veteran lawmaker said. He demanded that DPS Director Steven McCraw instruct his officers: "Don't ever throw a black woman on the ground again. Don't ever do it again."

We were pleased to see that state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, a fiery Tea Party-backed Republican from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, shared Coleman's anger. "Liberties were stomped on," he told McCraw. "Do you understand the outrage on this issue?"

We would hope that Coleman's committee and other governmental bodies will explore training for law-enforcement personnel at all levels, whether a big-city police officer or a campus cop. That training has to reinforce the fact that the job of a police officer is to keep the peace, not inflame a potentially volatile situation. If only cops we've seen on videos recently had remembered that basic fact.

The Earl Carl Institute, in conjunction with Black Greeks Speak, on Tuesday is hosting "#WhatHappenedtoSandraBland?" A Community Forum for Devising Strategies for Accountability in Combatting this Epidemic. The forum, scheduled from 6:30-8:30 p.m., will be held at the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University.